The politics of identity, which can segue into the politics of victimhood, has now established itself strongly on the left and among liberals of all stripes. A recent book, The Tribe (2018), by Ben Cobley, argues that “a discrete strain of politics… assign(s) favour to one group (including women and non-white-skinned people) and disfavour to another (notably the white-skinned and male)”. A spectrum running from far left to liberal conservatism, it has developed “shared assumptions, shared language and a shared value system”.
Wars over these attitudes mainly take place among members of the political and cultural establishments, who are themselves generally white. As such, the side which opposes this “discrete strain of politics” may be dismissed as reactionary conservatives, the supporters as those burdened with liberal guilt weaponised into projects for radical social change. It is, however, more difficult to so characterise these views when they are made by members of minority groups – in this case, immigrants of colour or their descendants.
Tariq Modood, professor of sociology at Bristol University, a British Pakistani and one with both academic and state honours, believes the left’s obeisance to an unreflective anti-racism is “confused”. In a talk he gave to a workshop on “Labour and England” in September, he said that “the self-effacement of being British among the centre-left made it difficult for people like me to say I was British and was proud to be British, that we were British together…ethnic minorities are now more affirming of a British identity than the white English”.
In an interview, he goes further, saying that minorities should “look to British imperial history – and find there proof of your Britishness. We were British subjects – and this resonates with quite a lot with people”. In this, Modood agrees with and draws on the observations of Sunder Katwala, son of Indian immigrants who moved to Doncaster and worked for the NHS, who has created in the British Future institute a centre to pursue the integration of minorities and an “inclusive citizenship”. On a panel earlier this year he has argued that “we need to put right what’s gone wrong in immigration: people have lost trust in the system…People don’t blame the immigrants – they blame the politicians. I think we should change the system of free movement.”
The shame which leftists and liberals often express – the writer Paul Mason wrote in 2015 that “I do not want to be English” – and the left-liberal contempt for what they claim is a continued attachment to imperial glory by whites, are…
